The prospect of bringing a new baby home when you already have a toddler can be extremely daunting. Life with a newborn baby is tiring and challenging enough but with a demanding elder brother or sister to deal with too, how do you cope?

Written in the same reassuring, accessible style as her bestselling The Contented Little Baby Book, The Contented Baby with Toddler Book is full of practical tips and sanguine advice that will calm and reassure all panicked parents. A major feature of the book is the adaptable routines, specifically designed to help you structure your day and meet all the needs of your toddler and your new baby... and still have time for lots of cuddles.

By using Gina's easy-to-follow methods not only will you have a contented baby who feeds regularly and sleeps through the night from an early age, but also a happy, involved toddler who remains calm and co-operative during this unsettled time.

I recommend this book to any mom who is having a second child very close to their first as part of their repertoire of books and advice out there. It is worth a look. But absolutely use common sense when applying any schedules or feeding advice with your children. The exact schedules on this book probably work best with bottle fed babies than breastfed ones. But there is other advice that is very good like the establishments of routines, giving you ideas of what to do with your toddler in detail. That can be invaluable early on when your need the most help.

I had my daughter when my son was 21 months old. I had been mostly following Sears’ “The Baby Book” and some of their advice was working, but some was not. I had become a bit disillusioned with their ideas, even though some of their advice we still use. At the time, I met a lady from the UK who mentioned the Gina Ford books and how she was following her advice with great success.

Up to that point I had been hesitant to try anything other than attachment parenting, so I was not very well informed on having a routine. I was also nervous about being able to nurse my daughter while attending to a little toddler. At first I tried this out almost exactly as it was written with a few variations to suit our lifestyle and my desire to breastfeed on demand. Funny thing was that my son responded well to the routine, and my baby did too.

Eventually, I took what worked for us from the book and incorporated it into our lifestyle and left out the things that did not work. In the end we are neither strict attachment parents nor are we too strict with our schedules, but we DO have a schedule. But please remember my caveat that one should also read some other ideas before implementing. Happy parenting!

If you are familiar with this author, this book is a combination of The New Contented Little Baby Book and The Contented Toddler Years. Gina Ford outlines how to fit your toddler's eating, sleeping, and playing schedule in with the addition of a new baby. She gives great ideas for what you can do with your toddler, say, while you're needing to feed a newborn. Her ideas and insight have been used in our home since our firstborn arrived in 2008. When we were expecting our second 16 months later, this book was a tool that I relied on, to give me insight to my toddler's transition with a new baby, as well as ideas for guiding me throughout my day (i.e. preparing a snack for my toddler before I got ready to feed the newborn, or getting my toddler's dinner ready and coordinating with me sitting to feed the baby). A lot of what Gina Ford suggests throughout this book (i.e. a toddler under 2 years isn't usually threatened with a new baby; they don't experience this unless they were older) I found to be spot on, true. It's easy to follow, easy to read, and a great support for anyone nervous about moving into the world of becoming a mum/mom of two.

We have a 14mth old and a 6 week old so this book was particularly relevant for us. There is definitely overlap between this book and the Contented Baby and the Contented Toddler Years but still contains tons of practical suggestions. We don't tend to follow all of the routines to the 'T' but rather look at the themes of positive or negative associations and/or behavior to watch out for.

I loved Gina's Contented Baby as it was super helpful when you are home with a newborn and pretty clueless as to what to do. The same applied with introducing the toddler to the newborn and trying to sync their schedules so that you stay sane. Like with all childcare books..... You will agree and disagree with certain components of the text but overall her advice is sound, reasonable and down to earth. She has a no-nonsense approach to how to deal with your children and that resonates with my husband and I as we are more traditional and old fashioned in how we parent. If you are super new-age, liberal and don't believe in structure or discipline.... Don't get this book or any of Gina Fords as the content will be way off target for your style of parenting.

This book was recommended by our pediatrician's nurse and while I do think there are some helpful tips in it I found it quite rigid (particularly for those first two months). The book seemed to have quite a few unbending rules around sleep and breastfeeding/pumping. I'm quite organized and scheduled but being sleep deprived as well as quite busy (with my 22-month older child home with me as well) made it difficult to keep up with the suggested guidelines. That being said, I found some pointers that were useful.